Breath & Pulse
by purpleswans
Summary: For Almei week day 7 (breath & pulse.) Alphonse enjoys a lazy morning with his wife.


**Last day of Almei Week! Please enjoy your fluf. I'm kind of surprised that I managed to hit every day this ear, since I've been traveling and working on other projects at the same time. Still, it's been a while since I contributed to this ship, so I'm glad it all worked out.**

 **Disclaimer: FMA is still not mine. If it was, I'd probably put a lot more Al and May in it.**

* * *

Alphonse Elric was in his favorite position: lying in bed with his arm around his wife. It was a lazy morning in the Xingese Chang Provence. All work relating to either their management of the clan or their duties at the school could be put off until later, and they weren't expected anywhere. The only information they had on the world outside their bedroom was the pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof.

All in all, it was the perfect day to sleep in.

Al was starting to feel sore from staying in one position for too long, so he squirmed and scooted a little, though he was careful not to disturb the sleeping princess.

May was still dead to the world. The only indication that she wasn't a porcelain statue was a small rise and fall of her chest.

Alphonse frowned. Now that he thought about it, May had been unusually tired a lot recently. He should probably check to make sure she didn't have anything wrong with her.

Al took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let his senses reach and feel the dragon's pulse.

Learning to read the dragon's pulse had been an essential element in his Alkahestry training. It had been his inability to understand this concept that had prevented him from learning all those years ago in an abandoned house near the northern wall of Briggs. When he'd first arrived in Xing, he had known that it would be necessary for him to learn it before meeting up with May and learning the actual science.

At the advice of his translator, Al had taken lessons from an elderly woman who taught future bodyguards how to read the dragon's pulse. It had been extremely difficult at first, especially since the woman's Amestrian was very poor and Al's Xingese was nonexistent. However, after a whole week of bad analogies and seemingly pointless meditation techniques, the teacher had mentioned how everything is connected, from the food we eat to the worms that will one day devour us.

At that point, Al immediately recalled his first lesson from Izumi Curtis and the riddle his brother had discovered the answer to. All is one, and one is all.

When Al made this connection, he finally understood what the dragon's pulse truly was: the flow of energy between all things that were connected in this world.

After that lesson, which resulted in Al's first success in the basic exercises, he wrote a letter to his brother and old teacher thanking them and explaining what he'd discovered. Ed still gets a kick out of that story.

Right now, though, Al was less concerned with the philosophy of Alchemy and Alkahestry, and more focused on checking to see if May was healthy. He felt the pulse of May's heart, a sturdy rhythm that Al knew was normal. He felt the energy around her lungs, rising and falling with each breath. He moved his focus up to her neck and head, where he didn't sense any anomalies. He moved on to her stomach area, and there was a little discomfort there. May had also been having morning sickness, but Al could tell that was only a symptom of some other issue.

Al turned his attention to just below her stomach. Her intestines seemed fine, but her energy was doing something odd right below, a strange twisting sensation, and the presence of another chi signature, somewhat similar to both her energy and Al's own…

Oh.

Ooooohhhhhh.

If Al hadn't already been lying down, he probably would have fallen over. As it was, his hand fell down on the bed with a loud "thump" that woke May.

The woman in question rubbed her eyes. "Alphonse? What is it?"

Al gulped. He was going to have to tell her. He had barely registered it himself, and now he had to…

Al shook his head. What was he freaking out for? This was good news! He and May had wanted this for a while now. They should be celebrating.

"You know how some people say they can sense an unborn child through the dragon's pulse?" Al started.

May's looked up at him, confused.

"Well, I think I can now say that they're right," Al said.

May looked even more confused. "Where did you sense…" Then, it dawned on her. Al could literally watch as she went from confusion to sudden realization and finally settled on pure joy.

"I guess we now know why you've been so tired recently," Al commented.

* * *

 **Please read, review, follow and favorite! And check back next year, I'll try to keep up to date and contribute to this ship week again.  
**


End file.
